Harry Ashbridge, Monzo

Hello! I’m Harry, and I’m a writer at Monzo.

Basically my job is to improve the quality of writing here. Partly by doing some writing myself, and partly by helping everyone else get better and more confident at writing too.

How did you get into content writing?

I got into writing sort of by chance. After I got my MA in History (which was really doubling down on being unemployable), I got a temp job proofreading for a company that trained bankers. They kept me on, and I eventually became a Publications Manager, which was basically an editor.

Then I saw an ad for an agency that was out to ‘rid the world of the tyranny of linguistic mediocrity’. I was sold on the spot. I applied, became the editor there, and gradually worked my way into writing, training and consultancy.

I was there for 6 years, and finally jumped ship to Monzo at the start of 2018.

What does a normal day look like?

It’s nice and varied. My remit covers every bit of writing we do, inside and out.

I’ll be working on stuff in the app: design flows, microcopy, naming, information architecture and things like that.

Then there’ll be emails announcing new features, or sitting down with our amazing customer service team to figure out how to respond to complex situations. I might help write a job ad, and then look over an internal policy or the latest draft of our legal terms.

I also spend a fair chunk of my time designing and running training sessions. They try to help everyone else get comfortable with our tone of voice, so the standard of writing is always good across the whole of Monzo. (And so you don’t need an ever-larger battalion of writers to produce stuff as we grow.)

What are the top 3 apps you use?

This is going to out me as very clearly not a tech person. Workwise, I’m always in Google Docs.

But honestly I spend most of my time either on Twitter (more browsing than tweeting), CastBox listening to podcasts, and CityMapper trying to figure out where the hell I’m going.

Where do you go and what do you do for inspiration?

It’s not original but it’s definitely true for me: if you let the start of an idea squat in the back of your mind eventually it’ll turn into something useful. So if I’m looking for inspiration I’ll tend to do something that’s nothing to do with the task at hand. Going for a walk, cooking a meal, hanging out washing. Anything that’s not trying to come up with nice words, really.

Are there any books or blogs you’d recommend?

For writing, Stephen King’s On Writing is great. Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style, too. For proper language nerds, Mark Forsyth’s books are great: The Etymologicon and The Elements of Eloquence especially.

I also think it’s really useful for writers to get familiar with some of the science behind what makes writing work. So anything by Richard Thaler, Daniel Kahnemann, Robert Cialdini and the like.

(There aren’t really any blogs I read regularly…)

What have you worked on that you’re most proud of?

I’m always proudest when the writing I’ve done makes a tangible difference.

In my old life as a consultant, I worked on a project for the HR department of one of the UK high street banks. We did a lot of good stuff (like getting 50% more people signed up to benefits they didn’t even know they had), but the thing I remember best is working on their maternity leave policy. We completely rewrote it, and their internal research said people understood it much better.

So the thought that some expectant parents understood their rights better, and had a little less stress, really makes me happy.

How do you approach getting stakeholders on board?

The one common thread is that it’s about relationships; you can’t cordon yourself off and then expect people to embrace your ideas. But once you’ve gotten to know people, how you get them on board depends on what they’re like.

Some people just want cold, hard numbers. If the last email you sent got a 30% better response rate, they’re in.

Some people are swayed by the science. So if you talk to them about ‘nudge’ theory, or the way that a few words can drastically change someone’s behaviour, they’ll see the value.

And then for some it’s just seeing the difference in practice. So rather than say ‘I’d like to work on this’, going to them with a first draft already written. I find people are much more worried about the prospect of change than the reality of it.

Although, to be honest, none of that applies at Monzo. Everyone is open to change and trying new stuff, and the only thing that matters is ‘could this make things better for customers?’. Our test-and-learn approach makes it a lovely place to be as a writer.

What are the biggest challenges you face as a content writer?

The biggest challenge is people underestimating the difference that better writing can make.

We get sort-of taught to write at school and university, and then we mostly never think about it again. Even though everyone is a writer nowadays. If you sit down at a keyboard and churn out emails, reports, presentations and articles all day… that makes you a writer innit.

So we’re all writing all the time, and rarely stop to think: could this be better? Because it’s so ubiquitous, we value it behind things like design and technology when it comes to making stuff more effective. But that’s a massive missed opportunity.

I’ve seen a call centre script rewrite that saved a business £6m; an email that bumped responses 800%; a website rewrite that cut complaints to practically nothing. All of that was just from looking at words. So I spent most of my former life in consulting trying to make the case that words would do more good than people realised.

(But again, that’s not a battle I face at Monzo. I’ve found my people.)

What’s your biggest content pet peeve?

I’m not gonna make myself many friends, but it might well be the word ‘content’…

If you’re a content writer, you’re a writer. If you’re a content designer, you’re a designer. I certainly don’t think of myself as a content writer (sorry!).

It’s always felt like a superfluous term to me, and I’m not sure it’s intuitively easy for outsiders to understand. For a group of people interested in making things as easy and clear as possible, the UX / CX / content world ironically has a lot of jargon.

Do you have any advice for aspiring content writers?

You can’t go it alone

As writers, we know that words change the world. But words in business often get pigeon-holed as the fluffy bit — even by enlightened brand types. So get as many people bought into the power of words as humanly possible. If we’re not careful, writing can mean something plonked in to replace Lorem Ipsum, and a bad case of that’ll-do-it is when it comes to sign-off. Don’t pen (ha) yourself in. Get to know designers, and product people, and engineers, and even the dreaded legal team. Your job is to prove that every word matters, and help them all communicate beautifully.

Question everything

A written brief is a good starting point. But all of my biggest writing failures have come from going ‘yeah, that seems to make sense’, and not dig, dig, digging into the detail. There’s no substitute for sitting down with people and being inquisitive; and the earlier on you can get involved, the better.

No-one’s ever going to say ‘back off, man — you’re too keen to do a good job here and it’s weirding me out’. But they’ll definitely be less than impressed if you take a slipshod brief, write something, and fail to psychically intuit the thing they thought they’d explained, but hadn’t quite.

Open your mind, Quaid *

We’re all hacks, sometimes. We’ve got a sack full of dependable linguistic tricks, and it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and keep playing the greatest hits. But we’ve got to fight that temptation. Read everything you can get your hands on, and let better writers wash over you. Our writing styles are all amalgams of the great things we’ve read in the past (unless you’re a certified genius like Nabokov or Marquez or whatever — in which case you can get lost), and the richer your reading diet, the better a writer you’ll become.

*Ten house points if you get that reference.

Get to the point

I’ve never gotten feedback that said: ‘Sorry, could you make that longer and more complicated?’

Remember who you work for

I don’t mean your boss, or the client. I mean your reader. I know I’m plagiarising every good writing guide in the world, but it bears repeating. Writing only exists to be read, and it’ll only be read if we’ve given readers the respect they’re due.

That can be tricky when you’re starting out and clients or bosses are trying to push you in a certain direction. But if you’re always, always asking ‘is this the best and most useful thing for the readers?’ then you’re on the right track.

Humans have more to read today than ever in the history of the world, on smaller and smaller screens, with less time to do it, and Instagram one click away. If we don’t put them first, they won’t pay attention — and why should they?

Is there anything you want to promote?

Not really! But if you want to know how we approach writing at Monzo, check out our tone of voice guidelines.

Where can people find you?

I’m on Twitter @hashbridge, which is mostly retweets of terrible jokes, occasional outbursts about Crystal Palace FC, and links to interesting articles about writing.

Otherwise feel free to say hi on LinkedIn!

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every word matters is curated by Dominic Warren.

Thanks again to Harry Ashbridge for taking the time to answer these questions.